Vol. CXXXIV—No. 102
Friday, October 22, 2010
columbiaspectator.com
New home for Floridita
Parents protest charter expansion
CU relocates Cuban joint to 12th Avenue
BY JAKE DAVIDSON Columbia Daily Spectator The charter school debate surfaced south of Harlem this week at a crowded Upper West Side Community Charter Education School Council meeting that felt Watch more like a protest. An auditorium at P.S. 145 on 105th Street was full for most of the meeting Wednesday night, which focused on a plan to potentially open a charter school within P.S. 145, also known as the Bloomingdale School. The Success Academy Network, a well known charter school network that operates five schools across Harlem, has applied to open another location called Upper West Success Academy that could possibly share space in P.S. 145. The city Department of Education says that school is currently only at 59 percent capacity. This potential location on the Upper West Side marks a shift in the charter school debate from its center in Harlem, where one in five kids now attends a charter school. Proponents of charters, which are public schools run by private boards, have argued that mission-based charter schools provide more choices for parents and superior academics, but critics claim that charters take away resources from traditional schools.
BY MAGGIE ASTOR Spectator Senior Staff Writer
SEE SUCCESS, page 2
MADISON
MALCOM X
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
AMSTERDAM
The Success Academy Network currently has five locations in Harlem and has applied to open an Upper West Side location that could possibly share space in P.S. 145 on 105th Street.
110TH
GRAPHIC BY HANNAH D’APICE
The day before Homecoming weekend showcases the stars of Columbia athletics today, the department will honor stalwarts of the past with the induction of the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame class of 2010, the third ever in the school’s history. The black tie dinner and induction ceremony, to take place this evening in Low Library, will celebrate the contributions of 20 former student-athletes, three former head coaches, and the 1961 football team, the last squad to take home the Ancient Eight hardware. Also among the inductees will be Gerald Sherwin, CC ’55, former president of the Columbia College Alumni Association, and William Steinman, a staff member of Sports Information from 19702002. In all, 19 men, six women, and the ’61 football team compose the class of 2010. “The Class of 2010 of the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame
SEE CHARTERS, page 2
SEE FLORIDITA, page 2
THE OTHER CANDIDATES Craig Schley and Rev. Michel Faulkner, non-Democratic candidates vying for Charles Rangel’s seat in Congress, spoke at a sparsely attended education town hall. |
Rangel’s challengers speak on education BY CARRIE MONTGOMERY Columbia Daily Spectator Though education has been at the center of Harlem politics this election season, it was the less mainstream local politicians Charter who came out School this week to debate the staWatch tus of neighborhood schools. Congressional candidates Craig Schley and Rev. Michel Faulkner joined around 50 local residents, parents, and students for an education town hall on Wednesday at the Future Leaders Institute Charter School in Harlem. State Senator Bill Perkins, who was announced in press releases as one of the speakers, was a no-show. Schley and Faulkner are both lesser-known candidates hoping to unseat Congressman Charles Rangel, the Democratic incumbent who won by a wide margin in his crowded primary this September. Schley petitioned to qualify as an independent challenger to Rangel, and Faulkner, a former
Third-ever Hall of Fame class inducted BY ZACH GLUBIAK Spectator Staff Writer
Faulkner, touching on a common misconception, reminded the audience that charter schools are public schools, and that people must recognize the role that charter schools play in education. “Charter schools provide competition for public schools, and competition is needed,” he said,
JACK ZIETMAN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Parents on Wednesday expressed concern about the potential loss of a $11 million grant for District 3 on the Upper West Side—P.S. 145 was one of the schools selected to receive that funding to help increase school enrollment and improve racial integration. Parents and CEC members said they were worried that if P.S. 145 doesn’t have room to expand, that money will be lost. But Elizabeth Rose, director of portfolio planning at the city DOE, said that they are looking
135TH
125TH
After years of on-and-off negotiations with the University, popular Cuban restaurant Floridita will reopen in April 2011 at a new location on 125th Street. Owner Ramon Diaz said he has signed a lease on a Columbia-owned building at the corner of 12th Avenue and 125th Street—just two blocks west of his former location on 125th and Broadway, and right next door to the newly relocated Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. If all goes according to plan, the restaurant will reopen almost exactly a year after Columbia, Diaz’s landlord, shut down the original location, citing emergency repairs needed to the kitchen floor. According to University spokesperson Victoria Benitez, Diaz signed the lease for the new space in May, but Diaz said his own plans were not certain until this month. He said he had wanted to reopen by now, but logistical delays made that impossible. “We at Floridita sincerely apologize to the community and loyal customers for these unforeseen delays, however, we have been forced to deal with an entity and issues that are out of our control,” Diaz wrote in a statement this week. “Despite these challenges, we have resolved to continue to work as hard as we can to reopen and reestablish Floridita within the community that we were proud to serve for 35 years.” For more than two years now, Diaz has negotiated with Columbia over his longtime premises on Broadway. The University owns the building, which is part of the Manhattanville campus expansion plan. According to Santiago Carrion, an architectural consultant and project manager for the new Floridita location, Columbia has required the restaurant to take care of
is outstanding. It is our third class and we are thrilled to induct them,” Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, director of intercollegiate athletics, wrote to Spectator. “We are looking forward to the evening.” The Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame was announced in 2005 as part of a special initiative of Murphy’s, who had previously started a Hall of Fame during her time at the University of Denver. The first class was inducted in 2006, with the second enshrined in 2008. Past inductees include the late baseball great Lou Gehrig and former NFL standout Marcellus Wiley. Wiley, along with several other current members of the hall, are expected to attend the induction ceremony. This year’s class features Beijing Olympic silver medalist in fencing Erinn Smart, National College Football Hall of Famer Walter Koppisch, U.S. Open tennis champion Oliver Campbell, and former longtime football coach, Buff Donelli. Donelli roamed the Light Blue sidelines for 11 years, and his reign
included the 1961 championship team being inducted alongside him. Inductees offer a wide spectrum of the 158-year history of Columbia athletics, from Campbell—an 1891 graduate—to Smart—a Barnard alumna from the class of 2001. Nominations for the Hall of Fame were accepted from November 2008 through March 2010. A selection committee, composed of athletics alumni and administrators, announced the class of 2010 this past June. Over 200 nominations were received, according to Columbia athletics. Honorees are divided up into eight categories: former male student athletes from the “Heritage Era” (1852-1955), former male and female studentathletes from the “Modern Era” (1955-Present), former coaches from the “Heritage Era,” coaches from the “Modern Era,” teams, athletics administrators and staff, and individuals SEE HOF, page 3
professional football player for the New York Jets, is a Republican candidate for Congress. “My goal is not to enroll people in the Republican party, but it is to liberate people of the tyranny of a one-party system,” Faulkner said, in response to one parent asking what kind of outreach he is doing in Harlem, a primarily Democratic area. With the Jets, Faulkner said, he was the smallest, weakest, and shortest Jets player. This distinction taught him what it means to fight, he said. The conversation focused on schools—a hot-button topic in Harlem, where the charter school system has expanded to a degree, resulting in a certain degree of controversy. Independent candidate Schley, also executive director of Voices of the Everyday People, said that the war that has formed between charters and traditional public schools is unproductive. There is, he said, “no competition between public and charter schools,” adding though that public schools do need some improvement. “Public education is the only thing we get for free,” Schley said.
“Public school needs more funding. The state held money from public education, so we must fix the system in its entirety by making sure there is more funding, and parents must be more involved.”
“Public education is the only thing we get for free. … We must fix the system in its entirety.” —Craig Schley, Independent congressional candidate
LARGER THAN LIFE
CHRISTINA PHAN FOR SPECTATOR
MUSICAL FLAIRS Robert Karpay (above) plays cello and sings backup vocals in the Columbiabased band Life Size Maps, which performed at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon. See page B4. |
OPINION, PAGE 4
SPORTS, BACK PAGE
EVENTS
WEATHER
On the wrong side
Lions host Dartmouth for Homecoming game
The Process of Embodiment
Today
Lax borders admit more than illegal immigrants.
Buy in, pay out Rhonda Shafei urges students to question our economic model.
Columbia will look to avenge last year’s embarrassing 28-6 loss to Dartmouth at its Homecoming game this weekend. The Lions are coming off a 13-27 defeat to Penn.
Tomorrow
Witness students and dance faculty in an interactive performance. Streng Studio, Barnard Hall Annex, 1:30 p.m.
Wasteland Come to a screening of “Wasteland” followed by a talk with Thomas J. Trebat. Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, 7:30 p.m.
56°/40°
64°/ 52°
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NEWS
EMBRY OWEN / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
NEW HOME After years of negotiations, Cuban restaurant Floridita will open next spring in its new location on 125th Street and 12th Avenue, bringing it farther west than its original location on Broadway. |
Floridita to relocate next to Dinosaur BBQ FLORIDITA from front page maintenance concerns beyond what city codes require, which he said has delayed the opening. Carrion said the University has asked Floridita to implement a system to remove smoke and exhaust after a fire, in addition to a special valve to prevent water contamination—two steps that he said go beyond the New York City Department of Buildings’ requirements. “If New York City is OK with it, Columbia should be, and it turns out that’s not the case,” Diaz told Spectator.
Rangel’s challengers talk schools CHARTERS from front page adding that there are lessons to be learned from charter schools. One debate of the evening centered on local schools’ curricula. “How would you go about defending gay literature passed on to the schools?” one parent asked. Schley said he would refrain from saying whether he supported gay marriage, noting though that the courts have been clear about their position on gay marriage and predicting that the U.S. Supreme Court will not approve it. “I didn’t say I would stop it,” Schley added. “Education—ideas must be debated, analyzed.” Faulkner was more direct. “I do not support gay marriage. I believe they should be protected and have rights, but I do not believe that it should be included into the schools.” Schley added, “There is a difference between advocating and studying it. I am not ... advocating it but studying it.” news@columbiaspectator.com
JACK ZIETMAN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
ON EDUCATION | Rev. Michel Faulkner spoke at a schools forum on Thursday.
The University is overstepping its bounds, Carrion said: “They’ve delayed the project by double-checking things that would be rechecked ... by the building department.” Though University officials did not comment on this specific claim, they released a statement saying, “The University has at every stage fulfilled its promises to achieve this win-win result for Floridita consistent with our responsibility to maintain safe premises for workers and patrons alike.” The statement continued, “We work with our commercial tenants to help them understand
what permits and approvals they need in order to operate within City Code.” Diaz will provide Columbia with information regarding the contractor who will build out the restaurant, it added. “I don’t get the sense it’s taken an unusually long period of time,” Columbia Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin said in an interview earlier this month. “We look forward to Floridita completing its relocation and hope it prospers as a business going forward.” maggie.astor@ columbiaspectator.com
Parents protest possible charter school expansion SUCCESS from front page into the grant closely. “We will not do anything that jeopardizes the magnet grant,” she said, pointing out that in the magnet grant proposal, P.S. 145 only planned to increase its number of enrolled students to 623, still well under the building’s 884-student capacity. Success Academy’s proposal, which does not specifically deal with its future physical placement, is currently before the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, one of the organizations that approves charters in New York State. To parents who expressed concerns about out-of-district students creating overcrowding, Rose said that enrollment priority would be given to students south of 110th Street. Rose continually stressed that parents in the district needed more options and referenced Success Academy’s high test scores and the fact that 20 percent of its students have special needs. Jenny Sedlis, spokesperson for the Success Charter Network, said that a new school would provide Upper West Side parents with much-needed new options. “It is so hard to find a great public school for your child. The best public schools are overcrowded and difficult to get into,” she said in an email. Still, there were loud responses when the topic of test scores was raised, and a few times, Noah Gotbaum, president of the Community Education Council, needed to call for order. In a recent letter to the SUNY Board of Trustees, Gotbaum— who also made his anti-charter stance clear at the meeting—argued that Success Academy has moved into public schools, increased class size, and not properly addressed the needs of special education students.
John LaPolla, a former high school teacher whose child suffers from Down syndrome, also contested the idea that test scores were the best way to measure a school, especially when special needs children are involved. “Think about the value equation of this school and it’s not test performance. It’s the performance of human beings, some of whom have been marginalized for far too long,” he said. Tina Crockett, president of the P.S. 145 Parents Association, criticized the process. “The organization is coming in to influence the parents to come to a school which hasn’t even been voted on,” she said. There was a group of procharter parents who cheered when Rose reminded the audience that charter schools are public schools, too. Tensions ran high even before the meeting began when P.S. 145’s principal Ivelisse Alvarez told videographers from Success Academy that they couldn’t record. When they refused to stop filming, parents shouted at the cameramen and blocked their lenses. Amidst the commotion, Gotbaum said the incident was proof that Success Academy has “a complete disregard for the laws, for the rules, for the community.” When Gotbaum told the audience that the New York City schools chancellor was currently speaking on the phone to Eva Moskowitz, founder of Success Academy, about the incident, there was a loud uproar. “Why is the chancellor speaking to Eva?” Gotbaum asked, turning to the audience. “Does she run this school?” The videographers were led away by police as some parents cheered. By the end of the meeting, the elementary school auditorium and lobby had around 18 school safety officers present. news@columbiaspectator.com
OCTOBER 22, 2010
OCTOBER 22, 2010
NEWS / GAMEDAY
Columbia honors professors in Low BY KARLA JIMENEZ Columbia Daily Spectator The Core Curriculum is more than just great books. And on Thursday night, professors and students gathered to celebrate what makes or breaks students’ experience with the Core: the teachers. This is what guest speaker Roosevelt Montas, associate dean of Columbia College and director of the Core Curriculum, said at this year’s Annual Great Teacher Awards. The award “acknowledges how important teaching is in the Core,” he said. “The Core is the center of the Columbia undergraduate education. The books are great, the books are wonderful, but you can read them on your own.” The Society of Columbia Graduates this year chose professor emeritus of Slavic languages Robert Belknap and Henry and Gertrude Rothschild professor of computer science Kathleen McKeown as the 2010 recipients. Both recipients, presented with awards in Low Library Rotunda, told Spectator they were honored. “It’s flattering. I love it,” Belknap said of the award. “We pretend the Core Curriculum is for the education of the students, but in our hearts we all know it’s for the education of
the faculty.” The Annual Great Teacher Awards were established in 1949 to honor faculty in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. To date, there have been 121 recipients, all of whose names appear in Butler Library—from Mark Van Doren
“This is not some outside society giving you an award. This is not your boss giving you an award. These are your students.” —Andrew Gaspar, president of Society of Columbia Graduates and Edwin H. Armstrong, the first honorees, to the new names that will be included from 2010. An important criterion in selecting the professors was their students’ evaluations, which
Homecoming demands utmost fan dedication GUPTA from back page make the game exciting for fans who know the game. And if you don’t like football? It’s cool. We can still be friends. There’s free booze, a halftime show, a nice view of the river, and more free booze if you’re a senior. If none of that entices you, I’d stick around just for the chance to see Roar-ee ride a bicycle around the field. Seriously, I’ve seen it once, and I’ll come back every Saturday in the fall for the chance to see it again. But I digress. What I’ve found is that one of admittedly many reasons that some students don’t show up for football games or athletic events in general is that they’ve never learned how to be a fan. In high school, a lot of Columbia students didn’t go because, well, we studied hard, did well in school, and made it here. But I’m here to tell you that you can do well in school, be involved in other things, get a good job, and still go to sporting events. So if you’ve never learned how to be a fan before, listen up for a crash course in how to be a fan for this weekend’s Homecoming football game against rival Dartmouth. be loud. I’ve been to too many football games where first-timers clap timidly. The whole goal of playing a home game is to create a crowd atmosphere so loud that the opposing team’s offense can’t hear themselves when they are calling plays at the line of scrimmage. OK, so we probably can’t do that, but we can still make it tough for them to play, and frankly, meek clapping just isn’t going to do the trick. So use those vocal chords, and let some air out of those lungs. See a player on the field who looks just a bit too skinny? Let him know about it. See the Columbia defense lining up for a big third down stop? Chant “Defense” to urge them on. See that wide receiver inevitably drop that pass when he was wide open over the middle? By all means let him know about it. you got to get up! Cheering by itself, however, is not enough. When it’s that pivotal third down play on defense, or as our offense is driving down the field, stand up and give the team the standing ovation it deserves. The other great part about standing up? If you and the person next to you do it, just motion around, and before you know it, everyone
around you will be standing and cheering as well. And when Alex Gross stuffs that running back on third and short, you can feel like you were a part of the play. Slight disclaimer: There is a chance that if you get up, either you will be the only one who stands and everyone around you just looks at you awkwardly, or that the grumpy old man behind you who paid $15 for his seat will grouchily ask you to sit down because you’re blocking his view. In either case, stay up for a few extra seconds, clap loudly to show you’re a real fan, and then take your seat because, well, the embarrassment just isn’t worth it. make it to the game before kickoff. The game is scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m., but make sure you’re there beforehand to get a good seat and load up on the free beverages. If you get there late, you risk sitting in less-than-prime seating (yes, that does exist at Baker), missing out on the free drinks (which, in all fairness, is probably a large part of the reason why you’re going), but most importantly, it makes us look weak to Dartmouth and their annoying fans. We can all make it to classes and meetings on time, and I’m sure that if we tried, we could all make it to the Homecoming game on time as well. So there you have it. The three main keys to becoming a Columbia athletics fan overnight. There are a couple other things I should toss in for good measure. Wear light blue clothing to the game, pick up a team pamphlet at the stadium so you know the players’ names, learn the words to our fight song and sing them proudly, fuel up before the game (you know what I mean), and, whatever you do, make sure you shower the Dartmouth team and fans with chants of “Columbia-rejects.” This is a huge game for Columbia coming off a disappointing loss at Penn. If the team wants to continue its move out of the Ivy League’s perennial cellar, it starts with beating bad teams like Dartmouth on Saturday. They could use our help, so let’s be loud and proud and show the team and the school that we can support our team. Kunal Gupta is a senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in operations research. sports@columbiaspectator.com
CORRECTION In a graphic accompanying the article “Klein’s success in goal key for women’s soccer,” in Wednesday’s paper, Lillian Klein’s year was listed as CC ’11. She is actually BC ’12. Spectator regrets the error.
the professors felt increased the award’s significance. “It’s very special, especially for the recipients. They’re very proud, and they’re proud because it comes from the students,” said Andrew Gaspar, SEAS ’69 and president of the Society of Columbia Graduates. “This is not some outside society giving you an award. This is not your boss giving you an award. These are your students.” McKeown, the 2010 SEAS recipient, said the input from students made the award more meaningful for her. “My students—they’re really my family. They’re my life,” McKeown said. “I love them, so that makes it all the more special.” Belknap has worked at Columbia for over 50 years, teaching courses in Russian, comparative literature, and literary theory, as well as other humanities courses. McKeown was the first woman to receive tenure at SEAS and served as the school’s first computer science department chair. C. Lowell Harriss, professor emeritus of economics, was also given posthumous recognition at the reception. “There are lots of teaching recognition awards at Columbia,” Gaspar said. “This is the big one.” news@columbiaspectator.com
PAGE 3
Hall of Fame class of 2010 to be inducted Friday HOF from front recognized for special achievement. The 1961 football team stands as one of Columbia’s greatest and not just for their achievements during their undergraduate years in Morningside Heights. The captain of that year’s squad, William V. Campbell, is the chair of the Columbia University Trustees, a former Columbia head football coach, and a National Football
“It is our third class and we are thrilled to induct them.” —M. Dianne Murphy, athletic director
Foundation Gold Medal winner. The most prestigious academic honor given in college football was renamed in Campbell’s honor in 2009. His teammates included first team All-Ivy honorees Bob Asack, Tony Day, Lee Black, Tom Haggerty, and Russ Warren, as well as second-teamer Dick Hassan. Warren has already been inducted into the Hall of Fame as an individual student-athlete.
Along with Donelli, Edward Kennedy, the swimming and diving coach from 1910-1955, and Dieter Ficken, the men’s soccer coach from 1977-2005, will be enshrined on the western wall of the Levien Gym lobby where the Hall of Fame is located. Ficken won eight Ivy League championships for the Lions, including seven straight between 1979-1985. During that span, Columbia enjoyed trips to the Final Four in 1979 and 1983, with a heartbreaking penalty shootout loss in the NCAA final, preventing the Lions from winning it all in ’83. That team, ranked No. 1 in the nation for most of the season and undefeated going into the championship match, was enshrined as part of the class of 2008. The proceeds from the evening’s black tie gala celebration will go to the Columbia Athletics Fund for Excellence. “The Fund for Excellence is a critical annual giving fund that provides resources to support the recruitment of talented student-athletes and coaches, sustain and enhance ongoing operations, enable program improvements, increase travel budgets, develop and maintain facilities, and implement new initiatives that make the athletics program the best it can be,” Dr. Murphy wrote. Tickets for the event are sold out.
HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2010 former male student-athletes— heritage era (1852-1955) • Charles Batterman, CC ’44 • Lou Bender, CC ’32 • Oliver Campbell, CC 1891 • Walter Koppisch, CC ’25 • John J. O’Brien, CC ’38 • Stephen Sobel, CC ’54 • Al Thompson, CC ’54 former male student-athletes— modern era • Thomas Auth, CC’ 90 • Robert Cottingham, Jr., CC ’88 • Rikhardur Dadason, CC ’96 • Garrett Neubart, CC ’95 • Nicholas Szerlip, CC ’95 • Frank Thomas, CC ’56 • Rory Wilfork, CC ’97 former female studentathletes • Alison Ahern, CC ’00 • Nicole Campbell, CC ’02 • Delilah DiCrescenzo, CC ’05 • Lucy Eccleston Norvall, BC ’03 • Kathy Gilbert White, CC ’91 • Erinn Smart, BC ’01 coach—heritage era • Edward T. Kennedy coach—modern era • Aldo T. “Buff” Donelli • Dieter Ficken team • 1961 - Football athletics staff • William Steinman (Sports Information, 1970-2002) special category for individual achievement • Gerald Sherwin, CC ’55
FIELD HOCKEY
VOLLEYBALL
For final home game of season, field hockey to host league foe Dartmouth
Light Blue to face oΩ against top Ivy competition in Penn, Princeton
The Columbia field hockey team (8-5, 1-3 Ivy) will look to end the season on a high note as it enters its last four fixtures of the campaign. This weekend, the Lions travel to Rutgers (6-10) before hosting Dartmouth (85, 2-2 Ivy) for the final home game of the year. The Lions suffered a narrow 3-2 defeat at Penn last weekend, which put an end to a winning streak in which they got the better of Holy Cross, Monmouth, Bucknell, and Lafayette. “I’m very pleased with our season as a whole—from where we started to where we’ve progressed. It’s been a really great job,” head coach Marybeth Freeman said. “The team have learned from every game and paid great attention to detail to bounce back from losses. The four-game winning streak we had was a sign of the hard work the members of this team have put in, and I’m very pleased with the evolution of the unit.” Columbia will be up against some dangerous attacking players this weekend, as Nicole Gentile leads the Rutgers attack with nine goals this season, while the Big Green’s Kelly Hood has netted 18 times already. Columbia sophomore Gabby Kozlowski is tied for the team’s lead in points with 11
The Columbia volleyball team (11-5, 3-3 Ivy) will face off against the top two teams in the Ivy League this weekend when it hosts Princeton (10-6, 5-0 Ivy) and current No. 2 Penn (8-9, 4-1 Ivy). The matches mark the beginning of a four-match conference homestand for the Light Blue. The Lions go into the game after a long set of away games, where they recorded victories at Brown and Dartmouth but slipped to defeat at Harvard, Yale, and Cornell. Columbia is back in Levien Gymnasium for the first time since Sept. 29 when it defeated Manhattan 3-0. The Lions have a perfect 8-0 record this season when playing at home, and will aim to extend that run. Columbia head coach Jon Wilson has been pleased with the season so far. “It’s been very positive—we’ve worked very hard and accomplished a lot that we haven’t before, at least in recent years,” he said. “The effort the squad puts in has been bearing fruit, which is very rewarding, and they have the dedication, talent, and mental focus to improve even more.” “This weekend is a great challenge for us,” he continued, “and we’re going to take it one game at a time. Princeton plays very well together and we’re preparing with a lot of
COLUMBIA AT RUTGERS Piscataway, N.J., Friday, 3 p.m. COLUMBIA VS. DARTMOUTH Baker Field, Sunday, 1 p.m.
goals alongside senior Julia Garrison, who has netted nine times and assisted four. Dartmouth has had an inconsistent year in the Ivies, losing 9-1 at Princeton before beating Penn 7-1. The match against Dartmouth marks the last home game this term for the Light Blue, and Freeman realizes the significance of the occasion for the senior members of the squad. “It’s a special day for our seniors. They’ve done very well and given so much to the program,” she said. “They’ve represented Columbia with pride and passion for four years, and we’re hoping to make Sunday a special event for them with our alumni that will be present commemorating them. Dartmouth is a good team, so the competition will be strong—but with our fans behind us, hopefully we’ll be able to send the seniors off with a victory.” The match against Rutgers is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 22, at 3 p.m., while the Lions host Dartmouth at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 24. — Mrinal Mohanka
COLUMBIA VS. PRINCETON Levien Gym, Friday, 4 p.m. COLUMBIA VS. PENN Levien Gym, Saturday, 7 p.m.
excitement—it’s an opportunity for us to play high-level volleyball, and that motivates us.” The Lions will have their work cut out this weekend as they face off against both of the reigning Ivy League Co-Players of the Week, Princeton’s Lydia Rudnick, who just earned the honor for the third consecutive week, and Penn’s Megan Tryon. Both players kept their teams at the top of the standings with solid performances last weekend. Columbia junior captain Nicole Goldhaber was delighted with the team’s victory over Brown and hopes to build on it. “We’ve shown a lot this season that we haven’t shown before, and the finishing against Brown was excellent,” she said. “We’re all very happy with that, and it’s very important, since all the games in the Ivies are so close. We’re excited to be back home in front of our fans, and to show them what we’ve got.” The Lions host Princeton on Friday at 4p.m., and Penn on Saturday at 7 p.m. — Mrinal Mohanka
WOMEN’S TENNIS CROSS COUNTRY
At Heptagonals, men’s cross country looks to defend Ancient Eight crown This weekend marks the most important meet of the year for the men’s and women’s cross country teams— the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships. The Light Blue men will try to defend their title while the women will look to improve on their third place performance from last year. At the 2009 Heps, the men edged Princeton by just one point. The Lions were led by now-senior Brendan Martin, who came in fifth with a time of 25:31.2. Martin isn’t the only Columbia runner returning from last year’s championship squad, as all of the top five finishers—Martin, juniors Kyle Merber and Justin Heck, and seniors Terence Prial and Anthony Merra—will be running this weekend. The Tigers should prove to be a tough opponent once again, as they too return all five of their top finishers. On the women’s side, the
IVY CHAMPIONSHIPS New York, N.Y., Friday, 11 a.m.
Light Blue returns four of its top five finishers, including last year’s leader, now-senior Jackie Drouin. Last season, the Lions finished behind Princeton and Harvard. The Tigers are returning only three of their top five finishers, while the Crimson is returning all five. The Tigers will still be a huge challenge for the Lions, as they swept the competition last year, taking the top five spots. Princeton’s fifth runner, then-senior Reilly Kiernan finished nearly a full 16 seconds ahead of Drouin and almost a minute faster than Columbia’s fifth runner, then-freshman Camille Murphy. The races begin on Friday at 11 a.m. in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. — Michele Cleary
Lions set to compete at USTA/ITA Northeast Regional Championships After taking a break from competition last week, the women’s tennis team will continue its fall tournament season at the USTA/ ITA Northeast Regional Championships hosted by Dartmouth. All Ancient Eight teams will battle it out on the courts of the Boss Tennis Center beginning this Friday with proceedings to conclude on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The singles and doubles champions from each regional championship of the USTA/ITA will advance to the 2010 USTA/ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, which will take place Nov. 4-7 at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, located in Flushing, N.Y., where Columbia will serve as the tournament host. Last time at the USTA/ ITA, none of Columbia’s players advanced to the finals—due in part to the injury of Columbia’s No. 1 Nicole
NORTHEAST REGIONALS Hanover, N.H., Oct. 22-26
Bartnik. This year, Bartnik is back in action. Columbia will need to deliver great competition this year if it plans to advance to the national level of this championship. Columbia’s absence from the USTA/ITA Nationals has spanned over five seasons—a reality the Lions will work to overcome when playing in the regional competition. The competition itself is also expected to be challenging for the Lions. Many of the Ivy teams have advanced their level of play in relation to last season. Penn’s performance this year has been particularly impressive, led by nationally ranked player No. 4 Connie Chieh-Yu Hsu. The competition is slated to begin today at Dartmouth and will continue until Tuesday. — Lauren Seaman
EDITORIAL & OPINION
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Devaluing the economic debate The 134th year of publication Independent since 1962 CORPORATE BOARD BEN COTTON Editor in Chief THOMAS RHIEL Managing Editor AKHIL MEHTA Publisher
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A
s debate heightens around campus surrounding the special concentration in business management, a fierce debate has also RHONDA resonated from the halls SHAFEI of central banks around the world. The latter The debate—pertaining to an Politics of international “currency war”—has been cast Hummus largely in political terms: Nations have blamed other nations for greedily devaluing their currencies. Our Columbia debate has been largely pedagogical: Should students of a liberal arts institution be indoctrinated into the professional world of business? These debates are interrelated. We have yet to measure the political implications of the Columbia business concentration, and we have failed to evaluate the currency crisis in more abstract terms. The introduction of the business concentration is an acceptance of the current economic system. The field of business, like economics, currently lacks the self-criticism needed to substantially reform global economic systems. By better preparing students for the business and financial worlds, we are essentially teaching them to accept the operations of those worlds, without questioning or evaluating their flaws. But that’s not to say that the onus lies on Columbia’s economics and business faculty. The international community at large has categorically failed in three regards: 1) in properly analyzing the abandonment of the gold standard, 2) in assessing that decision’s effect on global currencies, and 3) in highlighting efforts to establish a new international reserve currency. In 1944, Allied nations met in Bretton Woods, N.H. to establish a post-war economic order. Noting the unparalleled economic strength of the United States at this time, the delegates adopted a fixed currency exchange rate that pegged all foreign currencies to a reserve currency—the dollar. The dollar was given a fixed value in gold, $35 to an ounce. This meant that all nations pledged to keep their exchange rates in check by buying and selling dollars. This system was to ensure that nations would avoid export deficits, which occur when you import more than you export. The United States didn’t have to avoid export deficits since it hosted the reserve currency. It could pay itself out of debt by printing more dollars for foreign countries. As the United States continued to print more dollars, the supply of gold in Fort Knox rapidly declined. By 1971, unable to grant gold to nations demanding it and facing
Don’t tear down the wall BY CONOR SKELDING Last Tuesday, Lucha erected a temporary “border wall” on Low Plaza. The group aimed to raise awareness about the plight of illegal immigrants and the ostensible unfairness of a border wall. In the words of one of the leaders of Lucha, Malena Arnaud, BC ’11, “So much of U.S. money is funneled into building these walls, and the outcomes are ineffective and negative.” That’s not true. A wall is not bad for immigrants, but good for them—and the stronger the wall, the better it is for all immigrants, both legal and illegal. Lucha is right on one count—undocumented workers are treated deplorably. In a survey of southern Latino workers by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 41 percent of undocumented workers reported wage theft. Beyond monetary cheating, 32 percent reported on-the-job injuries, and of those, only 37 percent reported adequate
severe inflation due to Vietnam spending, Nixon declared the end of gold convertibility—no more could nations exchange their dollar reserves for gold. In came profligate dollar printing and competitive devaluation. Leaving the gold standard has allowed the U.S. to devalue the dollar by increasing the supply of money. This process allows the U.S. to get out of its trade deficit by reducing the price of U.S. products abroad and increasing the price of foreign products within the U.S. However, devaluation has had detrimental effects abroad and has instigated a currency war. U.S. devaluation has created a liquidity crisis in East Asian nations like Cambodia where the supply of American dollars within Cambodia exceeds that of the local currency. Since the Cambodian central bank can’t control the supply of U.S. dollars within its country, it faces an inflation crisis that’s out of its hands. John Maynard Keynes, one of Bretton Wood’s protagonists, adamantly opposed using the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He instead suggested creating a supranational currency called the Bancor that wouldn’t have to serve any national interests. Today, Russia and China have joined the ranks of several developing nations in calling upon a new, independent reserve currency à la Keynes’ Bancor. While the process of creating and monitoring this currency will certainly be difficult if not impossible, it is a process that should be discussed and properly covered in the media. Solutions must also be sought at the college level, here at Columbia. We are taught to accept the post-1971 economic order as consummate. At Columbia, an introductory economics course highlights the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference as the beginning of the international economics. If mentioned, the decision in 1971 to abandon the gold standard is stated as a matter of fact and never one meriting deeper analysis. The discourse surrounding our global currency system must be radically altered within the economics discipline. Our postgold world should not be accepted as a definite matter of fact. The 1971 decision must be put up to debate. Most significantly, alternatives to our current system of non-backed dollar reserves must be taken into consideration. At the end of the day, the debate surrounding Columbia’s business concentration is not about what constitutes a liberal arts education. It’s about using what a liberal arts education has taught us—to criticize, to question, to be curious—to achieve lasting success both in the classroom and in the global arena. Rhonda Shafei is a Columbia College junior majoring in history. She is an executive board member of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association, and the secretary general of the Columbia Model United Nations Conference and Exposition 2011. The Politics of Hummus runs alternate Fridays. treatment or compensation. The remainder were either not treated, or outright fired. These abuses frequently go unreported because the workers, not being citizens, are afraid of deportation and unaware of laws that might protect them.
An open border paves the way for mistreatment. With over 11 million illegal residents in this country, an influx of more unregulated immigrants is not a solution to the problem, but part of it. More cheap and unregulated labor can only lead unscrupulous employers to treat workers as expendable as they depress wages further. That surplus of non-citizen labor also serves to punish immigrants who waited long years to obtain visas and immigrated legally, but are not skilled laborers. But why do people immigrate illegally, rather than legally, especially given the abhorrent treatment that is so common? They take that bad risk because the alternative, legal immigration, is comparably slow
STAFF EDITORIAL
Casual Friday: Step up W
e Editorial Board members complain quite a bit. In addition to being students at Columbia University, and thereby cynical and jaded, we write three pieces a week that literally hinge on a complaint. Amid all of our dissatisfactions, there is one complaint that we find ourselves making more often and more angrily than any other (and no, it’s not about dining options). There is one thing on this campus that we loathe most of all, that we hold individually responsible for whatever miseries we may have. We, the members of the Editorial Board, speaking officially as the voice of the Columbia Daily Spectator, hereby declare our disgust for the stairs of Morningside Heights. This does not mean that we hate all stairs. Far from it! We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that one of the most beautiful features on our campus is, in fact, Low Steps. And we love the Steps! We like walking on them, sitting on them, pretending to read on them, writing about how much we like them, etc. Yet, even our neoclassical passion for the Steps cannot make up for the ascent into madness that is every trip to the seventh floor of Hamilton. It cannot compensate for how hard the Ruggles stairs are when wet (and dangerous stairs are, in fact, the worst kind of slippery
slope). The goodness of the Steps pales in comparison to the horror of the steps on the land bridge that connects the main campus to the awkward area in front of the International Affairs Building and East Campus, which are not even steps at all. We will not besmirch the good name of steps by saying that a path better climbed by golf cart than by foot constitutes a set of steps. The Steps do not make up for the steep stairs behind Earl Hall that end up perilously close to oncoming traffic (and are, more often than not, blocked off by their own set of gates and closed whenever we need them to be open). The beauty of the Steps will never distract us from the hideosity of the black ramps outside the front of Butler, which are clearly meant to be temporary, but have been here since time immemorial. And no matter how many times we efficiently and ecstatically navigate the Steps, we will still have to walk up and down the nonsensical stairways to hell in Lerner. All stairs are not created equal. Unfortunately, on this campus, the vast majority of the stairs are equally bad—and worthy of complaint. It is high time to work out some concrete steps to fix the ills of our concrete steps.
OCTOBER 22, 2010
Looking at violence in Mexico with clear eyes BY PABLO PICCATO Images and opinions about contemporary violence in Mexico today are plentiful, almost as much as the illegal substances that pay for that violence. Crime seems to be the one fact of Mexican reality that everyone can describe with certainty. Yet the precise contours of the current wave of murders remain clouded by the absence of reliable judicial investigations about specific acts of violence. It seems easier to talk about violence in the abstract sense, as if it was a “natural” characteristic of the country, than trying to look at it with an close, analytical eye. The first step is to be aware of what we do not know. About the big narco bosses that are supposed to control everything, for example, very little is known that can be supported with solid evidence, because they are seldom tried in front of the public. The current levels of violence (by some estimates, 30,000 deaths in the last decade) probably reflect the competition between multiple organizations vying for control of consumption, production, and routes to ship the drugs into the United States. The violence seems barbaric (decapitations, mutilations, massacres) but also perversely deliberate. Bodies are found with messages attached to them, or displayed in ways meant to convey a message. These
After Office Hours
It seems easier to talk about violence in the abstract sense. murders are often referred to as “executions,” suggesting that the victims were killed with a controlled use of force after their identification. YouTube videos, tweets, and chatrooms provide additional explanations and further warnings. Journalists are assassinated if they fail to cover these events in a way that satisfies the violent actors. The fluidity of betrayal and business opportunities preside over the current situation—the opposite of complete power attributed by myth to drug lords. Evidence about all of this comes from the news, but is seldom confirmed by official investigations. The central problem today in Mexico is the almost complete lack of concern about the responsibility for individual crimes. Local police stop investigating homicides when the crime appears to be linked to drugs. After all, and difficult. Illegal immigration requires no paperwork or waiting on sluggish bureaucracy. For instance, according to the Department of State Bulletin, applications filed after Jan. 1, 1994, for non-skilled laborers have yet to be looked at. There are longer wait times than that. In the case of one Ruth Ceballos, by the time her visa was approved, her children were no longer minors and thus could not immigrate with her. They had to restart the process. Lizet Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant, traveled five days without food or water in order to cross over the border. She regrets breaking the law, but says that she wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise, given her poverty. Legal immigration must be as fast and easy as possible, and illegal immigration prohibitively challenging. To that end, the wall should be expanded and the border protected to the point that illegal immigration is as difficult as possible. After the border is secure, a limited amnesty period should be granted to every single illegal resident in the country who is not determined to be a criminal. As citizens, these people will be able to vote, pay taxes, collect Social Security, and earn at least minimum wage. They will be able to report employer
Each Friday, a professor will share scholastic wisdom readers won’t find in lectures. Suggestions regarding which professors to feature are welcome.
if the federal police does not take over the case (drug trafficking is a federal offense), the narcos themselves use violence against local police investigators—witness the recent murder of the officer in charge of investigating the death of an American citizen in the Rio Bravo. The result is that the overwhelming majority of homicides remain unsolved. The absence of a serious effort to adjudicate responsibilities reinforces the deep-seated belief among most Mexicans that impunity, not punishment, defines crime. The government of Felipe Calderón and a good part of the media implicitly justify this state of affairs by arguing that most of the victims of the violence are involved with drugs, and that, if they happened to be policemen or journalists, they must have collaborated with the narcos in some capacity: They had it coming, in other words, so why investigate? This argument is beginning to face serious challenges: Human rights organizations claim that part of this violence comes from agents of the state. The number of complaints against the Army for human rights abuses is increasing rapidly. A few days ago, the Mexican Senate demanded that intelligence agencies look into allegations that a number of homicides are operations of “social cleansing” committed by vigilante groups against young men who are suspicious because they lack schools or jobs. It is becoming clear that the lack of justice is in itself a crime of the state, and that the large number of “executions” hides a lot of different forms of violence. Mexico is facing, in other words, not only the public health effects of the thriving business of illegal drugs, but also a massive human rights question that will haunt governments for years to come. In the universities and research centers on both sides of the border, we have an obligation to think clearly about the problem and avoid the simple answers that so easily emerge out of sensationalized views of Mexico. One good example is the Project on Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico, run by the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego, and their invaluable efforts to establish facts, inform policy, and keep an intelligent discussion going. My own research is about the practices and narratives that form the historical antecedents for the contemporary public impact of crime in Mexico. At Columbia in general, the Journalism School, SIPA and the Institute of Latin American Studies regularly host research and discussions on these themes. However, as always, it is the interest and the questions of students that will drive the conversation and turn into something more. Our joint work as scholars can contribute to that of human rights organizations and brave Mexican journalists in bringing to light the dangerous consequences of the use of force without the support of justice. The author is a professor in the department of history. He is the director of Columbia University’s Institute of Latin American Studies. abuses to police without fear of deportation. Their lives will be improved. After amnesty, our failed naturalization process must be streamlined and shortened. Since only a fixed number of people can be supported by a given amount of land, immigration cannot be unlimited—but the maximum number of people possible should be allowed citizenship so that they, too, can work hard and have a piece of the American Dream. For instance, instead of having six different agencies to deal with reams of forms filled with repetitive questions, we should have one body only for naturalization. Immigration should not require a lawyer to discern the forms, and it should not cost money to file the forms. Lucha protested the wall as unfairly exclusive and thus wrong. A wall does keep people out, but the alternative is worse. An open and unregulated border paves the way for those entering to be mistreated and treated as an underpaid, unrepresented, politically powerless second class. Lucha is the only voice I’ve seen speaking about immigration on campus, and to move forward toward a solution, we need to move away from left and right slogans. The author is a first-year in Columbia College.
jody’s drawings!
JODY ZELLMAN
OCTOBER 22, 2010
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GAMEDAY
OCTOBER 22, 2010
Lions need to limit powerful Dartmouth oΩense FOOTBALL from back page
ALYSON GOULDEN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
LIMITING LUCKY Defender Jesse Vella will try to prevent Dartmouth’s sensational sophomore forward Lucky Mkosana from scoring. |
Men’s soccer aims to notch first Ivy win against Big Green BY MRINAL MOHANKA Spectator Staff Writer The men’s soccer team (4-7-1, 0-3 Ivy) will aim for its first Ivy League win of the season when it hosts Dartmouth (6-4-1, 1-2 Ivy) in this year’s homecoming fixture on Sunday. The Lions go into the game following a narrow 3-2 defeat to Ivy League leaders, Princeton. Columbia bounced back from 1-0 down to take a 2-1 lead thanks to goals from David Najem and Francois Anderson, but the Tigers stole the points later on. The Lions have lost their last three fixtures—all against Ivy opposition—and will be looking to return to winning ways. Anderson and freshman Henning Sauerbier lead the team in points, and Najem is close behind. The midfield trio will need to be at the top of its game if the Lions are to find their first conference win this season. They will be aided offensively by strikers Will Stamatis and Bayo Adafin as well as fellow midfielder Nick Scott who have all found the back of the net at least once this season. Co-captains Mike Mazzullo and Peppe Carotenuto will look to pull the strings in midfield and control proceedings. The Light Blue defense has had some misfortune and conceded some preventable goals this season, but it has played solidly in recent games and will be looking to build on that. It will be no easy feat against the Big Green who will be attempting to bounce back from a 1-0 defeat against Penn. Prior to the loss against the Quakers, Dartmouth beat Yale 3-1 with goals from Daniel Keat, Aaron Gaide, and Lucky Mkosana. Mkosana leads the Big Green in points and is a
One of the biggest individual threats Dartmouth has to offer on the gridiron this weekend will be junior running back Nick Schwieger. In the four games Schwieger has played this season, he has put up 585 yards on the ground. With an average of 146.2 rushing yards per game. Schwieger is ranked third in the country. “He’s a different kind of back than the kids we’ve faced,” Wilson said. “He’s got a good offensive line, but he’s a good hard-nose back, and they play him on special teams. He’s not scared to put his face in there and block. He has a lot of speed. He can go the distance if he gets a crease.” The Lions have recently shown a weakness when it comes to stopping the run. Last weekend against Penn, the Quakers ran the ball almost every single play, totaling 281 rushing yards. It will be critical for the Light Blue defense to limit Dartmouth’s running game tomorrow. “We’ve just been harping and harping on our guys about their ability to stop the run and to contain them,” Wilson said. In addition to having a top running back, Dartmouth also has a stellar offensive line. Junior quarterback Conner Kempe, who is averaging 168.4 passing yards this season, hasn’t been sacked since the first game of the season. The Lions defense will have to work hard to get through the line and put pressure on Kempe. “The quarterback’s doing a good job getting the ball up. They’re doing a good job calling plays when the ball comes out quick,” Wilson said.
“We’re not worried about it, but it’s a challenge.” There are still plenty of things the Lions can do to try to keep the Big Green off the board. “We’re planning to keep the ball on offense, so their offense doesn’t get a chance to hold the football,” Wilson said. Holding Dartmouth to thirdand-long situations and keeping its offense off the field also gives the potent Columbia offense more opportunities to score. The Light Blue attack has been prolific at consistently scoring throughout the entire game. In its two highestscoring games, Columbia’s offense put up 42 points against both Princeton and Lafayette. Additionally, the Lions have won the time-of-possession battle in every game but one this year. The season opener against Fordham was the only game this season in which the Lions won the possession-time battle and didn’t win the game. In the team’s three victories, the offense put up at least 14 more points than its opponent and held on to the ball for at least two minutes longer. The biggest margin came in the game against Princeton, where the Light Blue won by 28 points and had the ball for 11 minutes and 34 seconds more than the Tigers. Columbia’s offense isn’t infallible, however. The Lions had several three-and-outs in last weekend’s game against Penn, so it will be important for the Light Blue to grab some yards right away on first down. “Gotta get something done on first down,” Wilson said. “Second and five’s a lot better than second and ten. We’ve got to do a better job on first down this week.”
On Saturday, the Lions will get an opportunity to redeem themselves after last weekend’s loss to Penn and last year’s loss to Dartmouth. It has also been 10 long years since the Light Blue collected its last Homecoming victory. “We want to win the game,” Wilson said. “We want to win, period. Win. W-I-N. That’s what we want. We’re hungry for it. We’re starving for a win.” The Light Blue will get its chance tomorrow, Oct. 23. Kickoff is set for 1:30 p.m. at Baker Athletics Complex. homecoming 2010 schedule of events
Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010 pregame picnic under the big tent 11:00 a.m.—1:30 p.m. Enjoy a barbecue buffet lunch before kick-off. homecoming carnival 11:00 a.m.—3:00 p.m. For the kid in all of us, a familyfriendly carnival featuring face painting, balloon animals, magic, games, prizes, and other fun activities. Tickets for picnic and carnival available at: http://www.college.columbia.edu/ alumni/events/homecoming
football game 1:30 p.m. Columbia vs. Dartmouth—need we say more? Tickets for game available at: www.gocolumbialions.com/tickets
COLUMBIA VS. DARTMOUTH Baker Field, Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
dominant force in attack. He scored a brace against Columbia in 2008, the last time Dartmouth visited Columbia Soccer Stadium, helping the Big Green triumph 3-1. Felipe Castrillon, who has since graduated, scored the lone goal for the Light Blue. Last season, the two teams met in Hanover, N.H., and the Lions triumphed 2-0 against the Big Green, who at the time were ranked No. 15 in the nation. An inspired performance by goalkeeper Alex Aurrichio, who made six saves in the second half, thwarted Dartmouth’s attack. Now-senior Bayo Adafin was on target for Columbia and will be hoping to repeat last season’s heroics this time around. Sophomore Nick Ayers sealed the win with a late strike off an assist by Adafin, extending the margin and saving the Lions the anxiety of a dramatic finale. Carotenuto hopes that the Lions can build on the heartbreaking game against Princeton to get a result this time around. “To beat Dartmouth two years in a row and break even with them in my time here would be great for us,” he said. “It won’t be easy though—we know that—but we managed to beat them away from home last year, so we believe we can beat them this year on our turf. We need to build on last weekend’s game against Princeton. We were really close, but in the end, we were our own worst enemy. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. tomorrow Saturday, Oct. 23, at Columbia Soccer Stadium.
Columbia looks to remain atop league standings BY SARAH SOMMER Spectator Senior Staff Writer Last weekend, the Columbia women’s soccer team rose to first place in the Ivy League standings. In doing so, the Lions gave themselves the enviable task of defending that position this weekend. Columbia will try for its fourth conference victory when it hosts Dartmouth on Saturday. The Lions (9-2-3, 3-0-1 Ivy) earned their third league win—and became the only Ivy team without a conference loss—by overtaking then-unbeaten Princeton on Oct. 16. Junior midfielder Nora Dooley, who had not scored since 2008, netted both of Columbia’s goals in the 2-0 victory. On Monday, she became the fourth Columbia player to receive Ivy Player of the Week honors this season. Dooley is one of 10 Columbia players to score this year and one of five to do so in the Lions’ past four games. While junior forward Ashlin Yahr (six goals) always presents a threat on the attack, Yahr also is just one of several scoring options. “It’s not a team with a star mentality,” head coach Kevin McCarthy said. “It’s a team where every player contributes, and the expectation is that each player is going to find a way to contribute.” Against Manhattan on Monday, freshman forward Coleen Rizzo and freshman midfielder Chelsea Ryan became the Lions’ latest scorers. Rizzo netted her first career goal and Ryan tallied her second to lead
Columbia to a 2-0 victory. The Lions are 3-0-1 in their last four contests, with two goals scored in each game. This week, they climbed to third place in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America Mid-Atlantic Region rankings and received six votes in the national rankings. But Columbia is not about to rest on its laurels. “With this program, it’s really not about how good you are—it’s how good you want to be,” McCarthy said. “This is
“It’s not a team with a star mentality.” —Kevin McCarthy, women’s soccer head coach the time of year when we expect to be really improving, and we’ll work very hard at that this weekend.” Dartmouth, meanwhile, is tied with Brown for fifth in the conference standings. The Big Green (4-7-2, 1-2-1 Ivy) has struggled offensively this season, scoring multiple goals in only two games. While Dartmouth rolled to a 7-0 win on Tuesday, its opponent, Vermont, had entered the game with a 2-14-0 record. The Big Green ranks last in the league in goals (16), assists (12), points (44), and corners (34). Columbia ranks first in all of those categories, with 22 goals, 26
COLUMBIA VS. DARTMOUTH Baker Field, Saturday, 7 p.m.
assists, 70 points, and 95 corners. The Lions are also the conference’s best defensive team. While Columbia’s defense involves all 11 players on the pitch, junior goalkeeper Lillian Klein has compiled impressive individual statistics within that scheme. She leads the league in goals-against average (0.58) and save percentage (0.887), and is tied for first in saves (63). Klein also has seven shutouts to her name, more than any other Ivy player. While Dartmouth earned a 2-0 win over Columbia last year, the Lions will pose a significant challenge this weekend. “This is the 2010 season,” senior captain Kelly Hostetler said. “We’re in a very different place than we were last year at this time, with a very different team.” This year’s team includes four seniors—Hostetler, defender Lauren Cooke, forward Keri Nobil, and goalkeeper Lindsay Danielson—for whom Saturday’s contest will be more than an Ivy battle. It will also be their last home game. But, with Columbia fighting for the league championship, the match will in no other way signal an end for the seniors. “We will not speak of conclusions or anything yet,” McCarthy said. “They have a lot of work still to do.”
Dartmouth wide receiver Reilly leads Big Green oΩensive attack BY ROBERT WREN GORDON Spectator Staff Writer When Columbia’s defense lines up against the Dartmouth offense this Saturday for the Homecoming game, it will have to pay special attention to Big Green wide receiver Michael Reilly. Reilly, a junior wideout from Denver, currently leads the Big Green in several receiving categories, including total receiving yards with 367, average yards per catch (22.9), and receiving touchdowns (3). Reilly is also tied for the team lead with senior wideout Tim McManus for most receptions at 16. However, such impressive numbers are no surprise for a man who started the 2010 campaign with a bang as Dartmouth defeated Bucknell on the road on Sept. 18. In that game, Reilly accounted for 12 of the 28 points his team scored, catching two touchdown passes in the big seasonopening victory. Reilly has continued to perform strongly as Dartmouth has worked its way to a 3-2 record over the first half of the 2010 season. The Big Green began Ivy play earlier this month in Philadelphia against the Quakers. Reilly caught five passes for 134 yards and one touchdown in a tough loss to Penn. The following week, he continued his stellar play, catching the ball four times for 124 yards.
Reilly has been a force on the gridiron throughout his career. Last year as a sophomore, he ranked second on the squad in both receptions and yardage. He also averaged 13.1 yards per catch in 2009, which was both best on the Big Green and third-highest overall in the Ivy League.
If the Lions are going to emerge with a win tomorrow, their defensive game plan will have to focus heavily on containing the explosive Dartmouth wide receiver. Senior year holds nothing but promise for Reilly, who continues to be a leader in the Big Green locker room. If the Lions are going to emerge with a win tomorrow, their defensive gameplan will have to focus heavily on containing the explosive Dartmouth wide receiver.
JASPER L. CLYATT / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
BIG PLAY | Dartmouth junior wide receiver Michael Reilly has sparked the Big Green offense this year. Reilly leads his team with 367 total receiving yards, three receiving touchdowns, and an average of 22.9 yards per catch.
FRIDAY FOURTH DOWN
PIXBOX
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Dartmouth at Columbia (-8.5) Penn at Yale (+3.5) Cornell at Brown (-18.5) Harvard at Princeton (-9.5) Oklahoma at Missouri (+2.5) LSU at Auburn (-5.5) Patriots at Chargers (-3.5) Over/Under: Homecoming Attendance (7,301) Columbia Penn Cornell Harvard Auburn New England Under Columbia Big Red Crimson OK Not the Hat Pretty Boy Over Baby blue Big red Brown Crimson Purple+Gold PATSSSS Over
When Norries found out I wasn’t engaged, he offered to set me up with one of the 100 boys on the team.
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Keeping the ball Coach Norries Wilson stresses the importance of the time-ofpossession battle. Of the five games Columbia has played this year, the only time it has lost the time-of-possession battle was against Fordham. In that game, the Lions eventually lost 16-9.
Stopping Schwieger The last time the two teams met, junior running back Nick Schwieger ran over the Columbia defense, collecting 242 rushing yards in a 28-6 shocker. This year, Schwieger is even better. He currently stands third in the country with a rushing average of 146.2 yards per game.
Lions
YARDS ALLOWED
POINTS AGAINST
19.0 23.2
COLUMBIA DARTMOUTH
344.0 403.8
COLUMBIA DARTMOUTH
KEY MATCHUPS Sean Brackett
Leon Ivery
Conner Kempe
Nick Schwieger Leon Ivery will have tough competition on Saturday if he hopes to outrun Nick Schwieger as the top running back. At last year’s showdown, Schwieger put up 242 rushing yards against the Lions. If Ivery hopes to match Schwieger’s number, the Light Blue will have to perform well against Dartmouth’s defense, and Ivery will have to be up to the challenge.
So far this season, Kempe has received excellent blocking from his offensive line and, as such, he has only been sacked once and is averaging 168.4 passing yards per game. Brackett will need solid coverage, excellent options downfield, and a good read if he hopes to give Kempe a run for his money at this weekend’s Homecoming game.
10 20 30 40 50
eddie smith #99/dt
mark dwyer #52/ng
teddy reed #94/de
j.b. andreassi #31/cb
20
30
c. phillips #90/de
40
10 20 alex gross #37/olb
tanner scott #86/wr
#58/c
luke hussey #49/sam
g. wymore #25/mike
matt oh #5/will
10
10
nick mistretta #57/ilb
craig hamilton shawn abuhoff #8/cb #25/cb
20
matt moretto #33/olb
austen fletcher
DEFENSE
30
Columbia
tim mcmanus #2/wr
40
Over
josh martin #95/de
ryan o’neill grant palmer #63/lg #75/lt
50
Pats
matt stotler ben popeck #92/dt #94/nt
patrick lahey #65/rg
40
Auburn
30
Tigers Sooners
josh smith #50/de
10
Big Red
bob hauschildt jeff adamskurt williams #76/lt #63/lg #8/wr kyle stupi #75/C
20
Quake Show
Charles Barkley on his gambling problem: “I just have to tell people, if they don’t like it, they can kiss my ass.”
calvin otis #24/cb
30
Light Blue
#67/rt
40
Chargers Sunny & 60s
Jacob Levenfeld (19-21)
john gallagher #85/te
conner kempe #19/qb
william montgomery
DEFENSE
Harvard
michael reilly #84/wr
sean brackett #10/qb
50
Penn Brown FTW
LSU
#82/te
scott ward ian quirk nico gutierrez #68/rt #67/rg #3/wr
Columbia
Missouri
andrew kennedy
nick schwieger #22/tb
20
Over
nathan lenz #30/fb
40
Chargers
leon ivery #43/rb
10
LSU
DARTMOUTH
OFFENSE
30
Mizzou
OFFENSE
20
Harvard
Where did this season of pixbox go? Time to get serious and defend my title. Giddyup boys.
COLUMBIA
10
Brown
Lauren Seaman (21-19)
30
Auburn Chargers
50
Oklahoma
40
Harvard
Penn
Lucas Shaw (19-21)
DARTMOUTH
STARTING LINEUPS
Brown
Homecoming!
NW: You okay? You don’t look well. You been hittin’ that spliff? Me: I’m hungover.
377.2 336.6
COLUMBIA
Quakers
Get some!
Kunal Gupta (19-21)
DARTMOUTH
40
“He have unbelievable legs. He run unbelievable” - Fernando Verdasco
26.0 27.8
COLUMBIA
Getting to Kempe Dartmouth junior quarterback Conner Kempe has been an elusive target for defenses this year. Protected behind a strong offensive line, Kempe has not been sacked for 18 quarters, and his lone sack of the year came in Dartmouth’s first game of the season.
YARDS GAINED
30
Victoria Jones (22-18)
Red White
Michele Cleary (22-18)
2
POINTS FOR
20
Happy birthday, Moose! Go Maple Leafs!
Penn
1
BY THE NUMBERS
10
Jim Pagels (24-16)
Oklahoma
I hope NY fans enjoyed the last game at Yankee Stadium this season.
KEYS TO THE GAME
g. waggoner #11/fs
adam mehrer neil schuster #47/fs #38/ss
pat scorah #1/ss
HARVARD VS. PRINCETON
PENN VS. YALE
BROWN VS. CORNELL
Princeton will look to avenge last year’s 37-3 loss to Harvard this weekend. Two things that go in Princeton’s favor this time around are Harvard’s injuries to its secondary and the return of Tigers running back Jordan Culbreath. In Harvard’s 21-19 loss to Lehigh, its secondary failed to step up, allowing almost 200 yards passing in the third quarter alone. This bodes well for Princeton quarterback Tommy Wornham, who is a threat to run and pass downfield. The other major component of the Tigers’ offensive attack is senior running back Jordan Culbreath, who missed most of last season with aplastic anemia. If Princeton can take advantage of these two gamechangers, the Tigers will have a decent chance at emerging with the win. Still, Harvard is the clear favorite to win this match. Harvard currently ranks second in the Ivies in offense and boasts the league’s top-ranked scoring defense. The potent Crimson offense is led by senior running back Gino Gordon, who currently is second in the league in rushing yardage. With Gordon leading the offense, and an active swarming defense playing well, Harvard will look to defeat Princeton.
Two of the three undefeated teams in the Ivy League will face off against each other when the Quakers (4-1, 2-0 Ivy) take on the Bulldogs (4-1, 2-0 Ivy) in a blockbuster matchup. This season, Penn leads the league in total defense, allowing just 249.4 yards per game. On the opposite end, Yale boasts the league’s top-ranked offense as the Bulldogs average 410.4 yards per game. Last time the two teams played, the Penn defense, as has been the case many times, told the story, outlasting the Bulldogs in a 9-0 win. In that game, the Quakers scored off an interception return for a touchdown and a field goal. The big question this time is of the status of Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, who missed last week’s game against Fordham with an injury. Last year, with Hart playing most of the game, Yale’s offense was stagnant. In that game, Hart finished with 56 yards and two interceptions before being replaced by Witt in the fourth quarter. If Hart is called upon to start this game, he will have to have a better showing than last year in order for Yale to hand the reigning Ivy League champs their first conference loss of the season.
What a contrast. Brown (3-2, 2-0 Ivy) has looked good in the Ivy season with a crushing win over preseason title favorite Harvard and a narrow win over Princeton. The Bears are one of just three teams in the Ivy League with a perfect conference record and after this weekend could be one of two teams with a win over Cornell. Cornell (1-4, 0-2 Ivy), on the other hand, has struggled all year long. The Big Red are coming off a deflating 44-3 loss at home to Colgate and stands last in the Ancient Eight in scoring offense, mustering an average of just 11 points per game. The Brown offense, led by senior wide receiver Alexander Tounkara—who is second among Ivy League receivers with 501 receiving yards—is third in the league with an average of 22 points per game. For Cornell to pull off the upset, it will have to find a way to slow down the Bear’s aerial assault. Look for Big Red senior linebacker Brand Lainhart—the league’s thirdleading tackler—to assume this responsibility as well as senior cornerback Emani Fenton, who already has three interceptions under his belt this season.
Penn
All hail Queen Victoria.
Brown ‘Vard Oklahoma LSU Patriots Over Roar-ee UPenn Corny Jersey Sucks
Michael Shapiro (15-25)
Ok Buuuuurn Pats
Bart Lopez (18-22) Juan Uribe could have two World Series rings before the Cubs win a championship!
Over Mufasa Penn
Just flipping a coin at this point...
Brown Harvard Oklahoma Bengals DA BOLTS Over
Zach Glubiak (14-26)
GAMEDAY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22 • PAGE 8
COLUMBIA (3-2, 1-1 Ivy) vs. DARTMOUTH (3-2, 0-2 Ivy) SATURDAY, 1:30 p.m., ROBERT K. KRAFT FIELD RADIO: WKCR 89.9 FM, WWDJ 970 AM • SPECTRUM.COLUMBIASPECTATOR.COM
Sports newbie’s guide to being a fan
Football set for Homecoming against Dartmouth BY VICTORIA JONES Spectator Staff Writer After all the tailgating is done, Saturday’s main attraction will take center stage. Tomorrow, the Lions will face off against the Big Green (3-2, 0-2 Ivy) in Columbia’s 2010 Homecoming match. In this year’s challenge, there will be a lot riding on the Light Blue’s performance. When the two teams met last season, Dartmouth—a team that typically holds tightly to its ranking at the bottom of the Ancient Eight—flattened Columbia by an embarrassing 28-6 margin. This year, the Big Green looks to be an even tougher opponent than in
A
h, Saturday. You may think that this is just another Saturday—a lazy day that begins with a hangover and a bowl of cereal and has a mix KUNAL of homework, televiGUPTA sion, and YouTube and finally ends with Moving another round of the Chains drinking in the evening. Well, luckily for you, this Saturday is not “just another Saturday.” This Saturday is Columbia’s Homecoming game, and you, the person
“We want to win, period. Win. W-I-N. That’s what we want. We’re hungry for it. We’re starving for a win.”
I’d stick around just for the chance to see Roaree ride a bicycle around the field. next to you, and everyone you know should go to Saturday’s Homecoming game. For those of you that like sports, this year’s team is better than any team the Lions have fielded this decade. The offense can put up some serious points, and the defense can lay down some serious hits. Yeah, Ivy League football has traditionally been three rushes and a cloud of dust. I get it, but this team can air out the ball and break big plays that SEE GUPTA, page 3
—Norries Wilson, head football coach
JASPER L. CLYATT / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
HIT PARADE Junior linebacker Nick Mistretta will be called upon to do what no one has accomplished in four games: sack Dartmouth quarterback Conner Kempe. The Light Blue defense has recorded nine sacks so far this season. |
past years. Although Dartmouth is 0-2 in league play, the team took defending league champ Penn into overtime and lost by just three points to Yale. “They’re full-grown and they’re ready to play and they’re battle-tested,” head coach Norries Wilson said. “The fruits of their labor are coming to fruition, and I think they’re a good team.” SEE FOOTBALL, page 6
Weekend
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010 • PAGE B1
Farms let students enjoy the fruits of their labor When the pressure of exams becomes too much to handle, an afternoon spent picking apples at an orchard is an unexpected escape. It can be surprisingly relaxing to wander among rows of apple trees, abandoning the fast pace of the city for a taste of country life. And if the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” is at all true, there’s also no better way to fend off mid-semester stress-induced colds.
How to get there hardeman orchards Red Hook, Dutchess County, NY
Getting here by public transportation is no easy feat and is not recommended. Borrowing a friend’s car or bumming a ride is recommended (as is just about anything short of hitchhiking).
DEMAREST FARMS Bergen County, located across the George Washington Bridge, is rife with greenery and plentiful fauna and flora—a drastic departure from the wasteland stereotype conjured up in most Manhattanites’ minds at the mention of New Jersey. Indicative of Bergen County’s suburban quaintness and green splendor is the family-owned and operated Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ. Atop approximately 40 acres, Demarest Farms is home to a multitude of fruits and vegetables, hayrides, and pumpkin stalks. It also hosts a charming farm store home to a litany of baked goods sure to immediately bring students back to childhood Thanksgiving dinners. The scent of apple cider sends shivers down the spine and memories of cold winters abound. Apple picking is therapeutic and enjoyably solemn as visitors are taken out into the vast apple orchards in a tractor. There seems to be no sense of limitation—the selection of apples appears endless and extends as far as the eye can see. The apple picking area is encircled by grand pine trees of immeasurable height and stature. The variety of apples is generous in variety and ripeness, giving each individual full control of his or her selection. There is a general sense that time stands still inside the orchards, as if all the minutes in the day still wouldn’t suffice to scope the full spread of the farm. —Rhonda Shafei
HARDEMAN ORCHARDS
wilken’s fruit and fir farm Yorktown Heights, Westchester, NY
demarest farms
Hillsdale, Bergen County, NJ Take New Jersey Transit train to the Hillsdale station for $8.75 one way.
Take the hudson line of Metro North train from Grand Central to Croton Harmon for $11.25 peak and $8.25 off-peak (oneway) when purchased at the station. GRAPHIC BY STEPHANIE MANNHEIM
WILKEN’S FRUIT AND FIR FARM For those from the Midwest, Wilkens Fruit and Fir Farm churns up autumnal nostalgia by the apple barrel. Treescapes tinged with burnt reds and oranges surround this little orchard haven in Yorktown Heights, Westchester. The pick-your-own half-bushel option for $28 gets a sizeable group of five people about 10 apples each. For an extra $3, rent an extended broom-like “apple-picker” that has a plastic contraption on one end with a bag hanging from it. Then, hop on the rustic hay cart for all of a 100-yard ride up to the orchards. At Wilkens there are three fields—McIntosh, the largest; Red Delicious, the smallest; and Golden Delicious. The fact that the Golden Delicious trees were still overflowing with apples should have been sufficient warning. They taste like vaguely sweet water and have an equally unappetizing dry, leathery skin—not nearly as satisfying as biting with audible crispness into a sugarysour McIntosh. At an apple orchard, a dribble of juice out the corner of the mouth is more than acceptable—it’s ideal. The Red Delicious section is elusively hard to find, but these dark-skinned beauties merit the trek to the end of the Golden Delicious field. For those who don’t have the apple-picking perseverance to finagle a half-bushel worth of goods, there are wooden crates at the pick-up area filled with apples to “top off” any bag. The crates feature apples currently not in the orchards, too. Stock up here on Honeycrisps and Fujis. Lastly, be sure to save time for the applecinnamon-sugar donut line—while fresh they literally melt, but brought home they just end up soggy in the plastic bag ($4 for 1/2 dozen). —Allison Malecha
For students lucky enough to have access to a car, it’s hard to beat a day spent picking apples at Hardeman Orchards, located about two hours north of the city in the tiny Hudson shore town of Red Hook. Fresh apples aside, the trip is worth it solely to temporarily abandon Manhattan for a town where the only restaurant in sight is a family-owned diner and there’s not a yellow taxi for miles. Even though the Hardeman farm stand boasts buckets upon buckets of apples ready for the taking, the pick-your-own system is the way to go here. Eighteen dollars buys a logo-emblazoned plastic bag and all the apples customers can squeeze into it. All told, the bag is big enough to fit about 40 apples, and customers are free to mix and match all the different varieties, from Fujis and Galas to Macouns and Empires. After handing over the bag, an unassuming, endearingly disheveled cashier tells eager apple-pickers to follow a winding dirt path, past a dingy greenhouse and a slightly overgrown vegetable garden, to the orchard. One of the benefits of picking apples in what is essentially the middle of nowhere is that students can usually have the entire orchard to themselves. On one Saturday afternoon, the place was entirely deserted except for the farm’s owner, who stopped for a smoke break in his pickup truck and offered advice on where to locate the Honeycrisp trees. Once visitors fill up their bags and work up a sweat from lugging around 40-some apples, nothing hits the spot better than one of Hardeman’s dirt-cheap bottles of cold cider. Take the drink to a shady spot under an apple tree, and the word “midterms” will never have seemed so foreign. —Maddy Kloss
What to pick For those who aren’t quite ready to ditch this town, the best of farm fresh apples are also available at the Samascott Orchards, which has a stand at the Columbia Greenmarket. Here are Spec A&E’s recommendations for the best of this apple season:
honeycrisp
fuji
Generally a delicate pattern of yellow and red, the honeycrisp lives up to its name—it’s sweet but always has a satisfying crunch.
Fuji apples are known for giving buyers the most bang for their buck: they’re one of the larger breeds, with individual fruits boasting the roundness and size of baseballs.
granny smith For those who like their apples with a little punch, the ubiquitous Granny Smith, with its trademark vibrant green hard skin, is notoriously sour.
macoun These McIntosh-Jersey Black hybrids have all the sweetness of a McIntosh but a firmer flesh. GRAPHIC BY HANNAH D’APICE
nicci yin
ZARA CASTANY / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
FALL FOR APPLES | Colorful leaves show that autumn has arrived, along with the season’s bountiful apple crop ripe for the picking.
PAGE B2
Best of
WEEKEND
OCTOBER 22, 2010
Dance Clubs
Dancing the night away can sometimes be tricky for students who are under the ripe old age of 21. Without a fake ID, it can be hard to find fun and somewhat classy places to go for a fun night out. It can, however, be done, thanks to a host of New York clubs that cater to the needs of just about everyone—whether they’re alcohol-free, offer live music, or suit a variety of dance styles. —BY EMMA STEIN
Webster Hall
MADDY KLOSS
Students 19+ searching for a more diverse venue that features some of the most popular DJs and bands should try Webster Hall, which is located in the East Village at 125 East 11th St. (between Third and Fourth avenues). The huge dance hall features five different rooms complete with live Tarot readers, stilt walkers, and every sort of fantastical performer students can imagine. Entrance fees are a bit pricey, ranging from $15-30 based on whether or not tickets are purchased in advance. A unique feature of Webster is a room called “The Studio,” which features up-and-coming artists in a smaller space. Students should plan ahead though before venturing out— formal dress is required.
Swing 46 For those who are fearless dancers, Swing 46 is the place to go. This romantic spot is a good place to take a date. Located in the heart of the theater district at 349 West 46th St. (between Eighth and Ninth avenues), the club is but a quick trip away on the 1 train and serves a large dinner menu, with entrees in the $20 range and appetizers upward of $10. There is a live swing band every night and plenty of dancing on the floor. The dress code is classy and most patrons do adhere to it. Additionally, while it is not uncommon to find professional dancers here, the club is welcoming to new dancers and offers lessons every night before the party begins.
Students looking for a typical clubbing experience—including go-go dancers, loud music, and LED lighting—can find it at Pacha New York, located at 618 West 46th St. (between 11th Avenue and West Side Highway). The club, with 25 locations worldwide, is one of the largest in New York City—four floors and 30,000 square feet in total. The club is 19+ on Friday nights and Saturday nights after 4 a.m., but the experiences students are bound to have here on a busy Saturday
COURTESY OF DOVETAIL
CHEF’S CHOICE | Dovetail on the Upper West Side recently received its first Michelin star, in honor of its exquisitely crafted dishes featuring local produce, such as the ones shown above.
Demystifying Michelin ratings on the tail of Dovetail’s new one-star designation BY KIMBERLY TOPILOW Columbia Daily Spectator The words “Michelin star” conjure up words like “elegance,” “expensive,” and “extravagance.” Without having been to it, people associate a starred restaurant with unparalleled culinary achievement. Upper West Side restaurant Dovetail became the proud owner of its first star in the Michelin Guide released earlier this month, and students may wonder how it received this designation, and what it means. The process of giving out stars is not very elaborate, but it is quite mysterious and carried out only by trained inspectors. Unlike Frank Bruni, these individuals maintain a strict anonymity. No one should be aware that they work for Michelin, not even family—it’s as if they are CIA agents. Restaurants are visited several times in a year to update the reviews and make necessary changes. Implied in the phrase “necessary changes” is that every once in a while, a restaurant is stripped of a star, which happened this year to Jean-Georges’ restaurant Perry Street. One star means “a very good restaurant in its category, worth a stop.” Two stars mean “excellent cooking, worth a detour,” and the coveted threestar ranking denotes “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.” Dovetail (103 West 77th St., at Columbus Avenue) is operated by chef and proprietor John Fraser. His menu showcases a reliance on local produce as well as his European schooling, with dishes such as halibut confit served with corn, shrimp, and tarragon. He gives the classic steak an Italian twist in the roasted sirloin with beef cheek lasagna, enhanced
No Lights, No Lycra
Pacha New York
by king trumpet mushrooms and onions. In the tradition of high-end establishments, Dovetail offers a tasting menu that will leave student wallets thoroughly pillaged. A seven-course meal is $105 per person. Any patron who desires can have a grand tour of the farmer’s market, which contributes to the restaurant’s fresh-ingredientfilled dishes like a peach salad with avocado, chayote, and cilantro. Another of New York’s Michelin-starred restaurants, Rouge Tomate (10 East 60th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues), is in a league of its own. According to its manager, no other restaurant has a nutritionist working with the chef to design a healthy yet delicious menu. The philosophy here is that food does not have to be a caloric disaster in order to satisfy. Proving this theory is an octopus salad tossed with potato, radish, arugula, and sea salt. It is earthy, meaty, sweet, salty, and tangy all at once—a bona fide explosion of flavor and harmonious textures. Rabbit Fleischnacke, a dish consisting of chestnut pasta strips spread with a rabbit terrine and then rolled up, is like eating pasta stuffed with foie gras. Nothing is richer or more decadent. A sweet salad of brussel sprout leaves is enhanced by slices of pear and savory prosciutto and salty hazelnuts provide contrast. Dessert is the true shocker in that it tastes like pure sin, but is probably no more than three hundred calories. A molten chocolate cake with banana, malt, chopped peanuts, and vanilla milk sherbet dazzles with its presentation and texture variety. Warm Valrhona chocolate oozes out of the small chocolate cylinder, a delicious partner to the cool, airy sherbet. Quite simply, a meal to remember.
are well worth the wait until they turn 21. The cover charge alone is somewhat pricey—it’s $30 on Fridays and $40 on Saturday to enter, although with a little hunting students can find plenty of special promotions (including a current promotion for a pair of free tickets). The club also hosts a number of special parties and DJs. Guests will discover different types of music and styles of decoration on each floor, including electronica and hip-hop.
Students interested in another type of party—where alcohol and drugs are completely banned and dancing reigns supreme—should come out to No Lights, No Lycra, a weekly dance party located in the Church of the Messiah Hall at 129 Russell St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The party, which takes place every Tuesday from 8 to 9:30 p.m., has a cover charge of $5 and promises fun outside the typical club environment. There is a new playlist each week and song suggestions are welcome.
OCTOBER 22, 2010
WEEKEND
PAGE B3
Stripping down to the truth about lingerie
A
COURTESY OF MOMA
REMASTERED | “The Leopard,” an Italian cinematic masterpiece, is part of MoMA series titled “To Save and Project,” which focuses on film preservation.
Film series at MoMA fosters new appreciation for old favorites BY SCOTT LIMBACHER Columbia Daily Spectator Amidst the seemingly endless season of major film festivals, it’s easy to get caught up in the search for the “next big thing.” But at the Museum of Modern Art’s “To Save and Project” series, cinema’s forgotten masterpieces—and the recent preservation projects that have brought them to life—take center stage. Running through Nov. 14, and featuring over 35 films from 13 countries, the festival brings to light an unusual selection of influential and under-seen movies—all for free, of course, with a CUID. Rescued from the threat of decay and disappearance by studios and nonprofit groups like Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, these movies find a home on MoMA’s screens, ensuring their place within cinema’s historical narrative. What immediately stands out, though, is the simple, visual side effect of this ambition: After exhaustive color and sound correction, the films really look incredible. Bringing movies that seldom see the light of day, let alone the light of the projector, to a venue like this offers the chance to see a rarely shown work in an even rarer form: as a vibrant, magnified spectacle onscreen. At the same time, though, this process of restoration—of manipulating, often digitally, the films’ image and sound—can begin to look more like revision than repair. Is it still possible to view preservation as a process of “excavating” films lost to
history when preservationists bring their own kind of authorship to a work? To School of the Arts film professor James Schamus, reinterpretation represents an unavoidable but ultimately constructive element of restoration.
The festival’s selections can be seen and admired as meticulous efforts to recreate a moment in cinema. “Every preservation project is an act of imagination and interpretation—but a necessary one,” he explained. “For films meant to be exhibited through now obsolete technology, restoration work calls for careful and creative decisions to imagine how a film might have been seen in its original, untouched state. ... Every aspect of preservation requires tact and conjecture, a feel for how to adapt to contemporary modes of reception and consumption.” Maybe, then, the festival’s selections can be seen and admired as efforts to meticulously and imaginatively recreate, rather than just restore, a moment in cinema. Rather than merely shedding light on lesser-known relics of film history, the
festival helps reveal preservation as a delicate and necessary art in its own right. This year’s highlights include a pair of long buried Andy Warhol films, an influential post-war British noir called “They Made Me a Fugitive,” and “Point of Order!,” a collage of news broadcasts documenting the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. Off-screen, too, the festival offers even more insight into the restorations: Sofia Coppola and Tamara Jenkins will present Barbara Loden’s seminal indie, Wanda, while Director Volker Schlöndorff will introduce a new cut of The Tin Drum—his brutal film on the rise of Nazism in Danzig. Luchino Visconti’s literary epic “The Leopard,” which opened the festival last weekend, makes a particularly great case for the power and value of preservation. The film, which traces the changing role of a Sicilian prince through the Italian Risorgimento, recreates the opulent period on a massive scale and in vivid detail. Bringing out the overwhelming scope of the movie’s striking “Technirama” format, the restoration breathes new life into a film built around the dominance of color and composition. With films like “The Leopard,” the festival not only offers students the chance to see a number of great and unusual movies onscreen, but also works to characterize film preservation itself. With “To Save and Project,” MoMA illuminates a complex, imaginative process whose powerful contributions to film are often hidden from view.
t first glance, lingerie may seem like a relatively lackluster topic. After all, it’s really just some fancy underwear— something that’s not even seen by most people. VALERIYA However, from my experiSAFRONOVA ence, lingerie is not only something erotic, but also Sex in the a source of anything from Lion’s Den confidence to self-doubt. Considering that it’s something that pretty much only a woman and someone who gets to take her clothes off are able to see, lingerie is very intimate. Victoria got it right—lingerie is a secret, and if anyone wants to be let in on it, some measure of familiarity is necessary. However, in this age of billboard ads and immense online photo galleries, lingerie has lost a lot of the mysterious aura and naughty connotations that it perhaps once had. With its transition from a private garment to a publicly discussed and heavily advertised item, lingerie’s placement in society has also changed. Writers have discussed how porn affects women’s self-confidence in bed, causing them to compare themselves to insanely high standards, but the power of the lingerie ad has been overlooked. Unlike porn, which presents surreal scenarios and characters, and generally gives everything away without hesitation, the lingerie ad is subtle, hinting to both men and women that the lifestyle it presents is accessible, and full of unmentionable pleasures. Victoria’s Secret is made for the average woman, but when walking by the storefront, most women probably feel that the models represent an impossible ideal. Yet, they buy into this image, trying their hardest to look like Heidi Klum with the purchase of a cheap, badly designed corset. This is a theory, of course, and most of the reactions I got from my friends were that lingerie makes them feel sexy, whether anyone sees them wearing it or not. Some of the women I spoke to said that lingerie might even empower females by giving them a hidden self-assurance on days when they’re feeling down. Men that I talked to basically saw lingerie as the icing on a cake, or the wrapping on a present. One said that “it makes a cute girl hot,” but most cared more about taking it off than looking at it. After all, underwear isn’t art—it’s meant to be used. For me, lingerie has definitely been a big part of the process of growing up and finding my inner sexual confidence. Putting it on for the first time felt awkward, and I wondered whether I’d even look good in it. It took me a little while to realize that, as with any other clothing, how I wore it mattered more than what exactly it looked like. Cowering and being embarrassed isn’t sexy whether you wear a black lacy thong or not. I must confess also that at one point a few years ago, lingerie became a point of near obsession for me. I had been fighting with my boyfriend at the time, not noticing all the signs of a dying relationship. I was vulnerable enough that when he made a flippant comment—in the heat of battle—connecting his problematic behavior to the fact that he had not seen me in lingerie for a long time, I decided that buying hordes of underwear would fix everything. Even after we broke up, I continued stockpiling panties and bras as if in preparation for a raid during which I wouldn’t be able to wash clothes for at least a month. Fortunately, I’m relatively sane most of the time, so I got over lingerie, figuring out that being self-assured ups sexiness a thousand times more than some lace and silk. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: It’s what’s inside that counts. Valeriya Safronova is a Columbia College junior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. Sex in the Lion’s Den runs alternate Fridays.
Matthew Williamson reveals his colorful inspirations at FIT BY ELIZABETH FOYDEL Spectator Staff Writer A book’s content is usually more important than its presentation, but for fashion designer Matthew Williamson, readers can tell a lot about a book by the shocking pink hue of its inside cover. Williamson appeared in conversation with Harper’s Bazaar features editor Laura Brown and the director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology Patricia Mears at FIT on Thursday night. The event marked the release of fashion historian Colin McDowell’s new book about the designer, simply titled “Matthew Williamson.” Brown, a longtime pal of Williamson and a self-professed fan of his designs—she donned a spectacular gold-beaded Williamson creation for the event—was given the floor to begin the discussion. She held open a copy of the book as evidence and asked Williamson about the origins of his love for the distinctive shade of neon pink. When he debuted his first collection of eleven dresses in 1997, Williamson said, he was caught backstage by a “really important journalist from British Vogue,” who named the pink dresses as her favorites and that the designer “should always do a pink dress.” The pink hue’s success was inadvertent, but Williamson’s work with color is something that he acknowledges has defined his work. “I was born in Manchester, a pretty grey industrial city,” he said, “and after leaving Manchester, moving to London, studying at St.
Martin’s, I wanted to express something different than the environment I was brought up in.” Speaking to the hordes of fashion students in the audience, Brown and Mears questioned Williamson on his inspiration and success. Extensive travel to India, he said, fueled his conception of the exotic and otherworldly, and his line has since built upon that aesthetic. “The first show I did was simple, naive, and we didn’t really have an agenda at the time,” he said. “Now there is much more of a conscious decision to create this wonderful fantasy of a woman who is bohemian, with a laid-back sense of glamour and jetset.” Williamson struggled as the youngest member of his 60-person class at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London to find his creative identity, but when he began building his first collection, his story turned rather charmed. He struck up a friendship with Jade Jagger, who initially called Williamson to request to keep a skirt she had worn on a British Vogue shoot, and she suggested that he stage his first fashion show. Within a few weeks, Helena Christensen and Kate Moss were walking down the runway in the dresses that launched Williamson’s line into fashion editorials and public awareness. Now memorialized in the glossy pages of McDowell’s book, Williamson’s story is certainly the fodder of fashion school dreams. But speaking in FIT’s intimate Katie Murphy Amphitheatre, he responded to audience questions with the caveat that success is an ongoing project. He might go
COURTESY OF FIT
PRINCE OF PINK | Matthew Williamson, who originally became famous for his neon pink dresses, spoke at FIT this week. His designs (such as the dress above) have a vibrant, exotic vibe. to the cinema with Madonna and dine with Karl Lagerfeld, but even established designers have to have strong visions and thick skins. “It’s got to be in your blood and run through your veins,” Williamson said. Even as he launches collaborations with H&M
and Bvlgari and prepares to launch contemporary sister line Muse to his main label, Williamson said “there are times when we’re not in fashion.” Still, he tries to ride the wave and stay true to his aesthetic—which still, to this day, is drenched in shocking color.
WEEKEND
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OCTOBER 22, 2010
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Picks
WHERE IT’S AT Time: Saturday, Oct. 23 at 9:30 p.m. Place: The Charleston, 174 Bedford Avenue (between 7th and 8th streets), Brooklyn
CHRISTINA PHAN FOR SPECTATOR
MAP IT OUT | Above, the members of Life Size Maps—Mike McKeever, Will Ewing, and Robert Karpay—perform at the college music festival CMJ. Below, drummer Ewing gets in the zone during the band’s set.
Life Size Maps Band charts new territory at prominent music festival
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BY ZOE CAMP Columbia Daily Spectator
‘Walkabout Yeolha’
Play takes a look at the battle between isolation and globalization BY ALEXIS NELSON Columbia Daily Spectator A play as saturated with absurdist humor, dance numbers, and Lady Gaga references as “Walkabout Yeolha” is hard to find. The play, presented by Columbia Stages—a part of the Columbia School of the Arts that showcases graduate student theater productions— runs this weekend. “Walkabout Yeolha” WHERE IT’S AT is set in a post-industrial, make-believe world, and Time: Saturday, Oct. 23 at 2 p.m. and grapples with issues of glo8 p.m. balization, neo-liberalism, Place: Riverside Theater, 91 and culture clash. It is an Claremont Ave. (at 120th Street) example of how Columbia Cost: Free with CUID Stages is giving students the chance to gain experience outside of the classroom while sharing their areas of theater expertise with the larger Columbia University community. “I’d say that dual mission—education and public—has always been an important aspect of these productions,” said Ian Klein, the marketing director of Columbia Stages. The institution presents thesis productions by directors, actors, and playwrights in their last year of MFA Theatre Arts training during its main stage season. Although the organization was only branded Columbia Stages in 2004, these productions have been a longstanding curricular requirement to allow MFA students to graduate.
“Walkabout Yeolha” grapples with topics like neo-liberalism and culture clash. Walking a fine line between pathos and comic absurdity, the play presents weighty issues in an accessible manner. With “Walkabout Yeolha,” Columbia Stages allows SoA students to transform their extensive training into tangible products. The play is directed by Kon Yi, SoA ‘11, and translated by Walter Byongsok Chon and Kyoung Park, SoA ‘12, who adapted the play from a 2007 Korean production titled “Inching Toward Yeolha.” The plot revolves around the insular village of Yeolha. A conflict begins when an outsider arrives and challenges the villagers’ selfenforced isolation. Walking a fine line between pathos and comedic absurdity, the play presents weighty issues in an accessible manner. “I think this conceptualization of the play is a metaphor for the multi-cultural, post-industrial world we live in,” Park said, “whether we live in New York or Seoul.” As Park demonstrates, the major theme of the play resonates beyond the Columbia community. Park drastically re-worked the play’s 2007 version to achieve a more conflict-driven plot that he thought would be more appealing to American audiences. The adapted play also departs notably from the quite sexist original production. “I decided to explode the misogyny and sexism,” Park said. His changes complemented director Kon Yi’s decision to cast women in several leading, powerful roles. “Walkabout Yeolha” is part of Columbia Stages new effort to draw more students to the organization’s shows. “We really want to get the word out,” Klein said. “Columbia Stages productions are free to anyone with any college ID, and free theater in New York should be classed a hot commodity.”
events theater
‘ZooZoo’ —New Victory Theater, 209 West 42 St. (between Seventh and Eighth avenues), Friday, Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday, Oct. 23-24 at 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., $14. It’s a zoo inside a theater when acrobats dress up as life-sized frogs, penguins, and other animals and parade across the stage. This carnivalesque show celebrates biodiversity while exhibiting fantastical costumes.
Columbia’s own Life Size Maps is arguably the hardest-working band at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon. The group is playing a grand total of four shows over the fiveday college music festival—more sets than any other band this year. Last night’s 30 minute set at Lit Lounge (93 Second Ave.) was Life Size Maps’ first performance at CMJ, but with stellar group dynamics, undeniably catchy pop tunes, and spot-on solos, one would think that the collegiate band’s members are festival vets. The band’s infectious blend of grunge-tinged pop, Beach-Boysstyle harmonies, and classical music (synth player Robert Karpay, a student at the Manhattan School of Music, plays cello in most songs) came through in a taut, no-frills set that dispelled any fears of the pretentiousness often associated with college rock. The power chords in opener “Stand Still” practically shot from the speakers, the grunge sweetly offset by the swooning, Morrisseylike voice of lead singer Mike McKeever, CC ’11.. Particularly stellar was the never-before-heard “I Don’t Need It,” a rowdy, chugging tune recalling Weezer à la “The Blue Album.” Judging by the audience’s warm reception to the searing guitar solos and spot-on drumming by Will Ewing, CC ’11, it’s safe to assume that audiences will be hearing this song much, much more in future shows. Though the band performed with the careful synchronization of a machine, Karpay’s cello-playing stole the show. His ability to adapt the deep, heavy rumblings of the cello to fit the individual character of each song was remarkable. In the sunny “Seems to Me,” for example, he opted for a traditional, classical approach. But in the hearty “Car Clean Motor,” Karpay ditched the bow and
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EMILY GENATOWSKI FOR SPECTATOR
played the cello as if it were a stand-up bass. Most importantly, Life Size Maps’ use of this nontraditional instrument never came across as a gimmick—in fact, the band presented a compelling reason to ditch the bass guitar and experiment with string instruments more often. Perhaps because French rock band Phoenix was playing to a colossal crowd at Madison Square Garden at precisely the same time, or maybe because it was 8:30 on a Wednesday, Lit Lounge’s modest performance space was only about a quarter full—a mix of the band’s family and friends, fellow Columbia students, and curious attendees looking to see the much-talked-about band in person. However, the band managed to turn the potential awkwardness into a chance to connect with the audience. “Come up to the front!” McKeever shouted to tentative onlookers. By the end of the night, the audience was clapping and singing along, and the room was flowing with the type of energy only possible in such a small setting. Given the buzz Life Size Maps has received from the Converse Blog, loudvine.com, and other musical taste-makers, it’s highly unlikely that the band’s other CMJ shows will be as calm and laid-back as Wednesday night’s opener. The hooks, the energy, the dynamics—these are all important components of live pop music and Life Size Maps does them very, very well.
‘Post-Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas’
French director’s films tell subtle yet stirring stories BY JOSEPH POMP Columbia Daily Spectator Olivier Assayas is no stranger to Brooklyn, or at least to its leading venue for art house movies, BAMcinématek. Though a native Frenchman, Assayas has a prominent presence in New York film culture. Last summer’s BAMcinemaFEST featured “Assayas Picks,” in which he presented two films that have been particular inspirations. His own films have long been first-run favorites there, from the now cult classic “Irma Vep” to the recent indie hit “Summer Hours.” So while it comes as no surprise that BAM’s latest retrospective is “Post-Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas,” running through Oct. 28, its arrival couldn’t be more welcome—or more timely. Assayas’ latest film, “Carlos,” a 330-minute tour de force chronicling the real-life escapades of a globe-trotting terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, has just reached American screens, and is being shown both as a part of the series and elsewhere in the city. As special as it is to see “Carlos” in theaters, the real importance of the retrospective is its comprehensive presentation of Assayas’ oeuvre thus far. Though his two most recent narrative features, “Carlos” and “Summer Hours,” have been sufficiently hailed as masterpieces, Assayas has yet to be deemed as canonical as he should be. He has yet to amass a huge fan base in the U.S., perhaps because his directorial hand is much gentler and subtler than most of his contemporaries’. His films revel in the simple moments of life. Take “Cold Weather,” a coming-of-age film which is as interested in teenagers’ partying as it is in their solitary moments, or “Late August, Early September,” which poetically explores the complex relationships between a group of Parisians in their 30s. Even “Boarding Gate,” an erotic thriller about a prostitute-turned-drug dealer, is less concerned with shaking audiences up with crime
wildcard
Hillel Masquerade Formal —Low Library, Saturday, Oct. 23, 8:30 p.m., $15 with CUID. Instead of studying on the steps of Low Library this weekend, students can make the building into their dance floor while supporting the non-profit organization Jewish Heart for Africa. Attendees will also have the chance to participate in a raffle and win prizes like designer bags and sporting tickets.
WHERE IT’S AT Time: Through Oct. 28, check www.bam.org for screening times Place: BAM, 30 Lafayette Ave. (between St. Felix Street and Ashland Place), Brooklyn Cost: $12
ILLUSTRATION BY JIIN CHOI
FRENCH FLAIR | Director Olivier Assayas and his nuanced films are currently the subject of a retrospective at BAM. genre conventions than with examining globalization, one of the central themes of Assayas’ entire body of work. The international focus of Assayas’ filmmaking is indeed one of its most exciting, unique aspects. While growing up in the suburbs of Paris, he cultivated a globally-minded interest in film and related arts. Before making films, in fact, he gained prominence as a critic for legendary French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma by writing about modern Asian cinema. His film connoisseurship is manifested in the retrospective with a screening of one of his favorite films, Phillipe Garrel’s “I Don’t Hear the Guitar Anymore.” In addition to his film-heavy background, Assayas also has a strong interest in music (hence the epithet “post-punk” in the retrospective’s title). Rock ‘n’ roll plays a central role in many of his films, including “Clean” and “Noise.” For more avant-garde audiophiles, though, there’s “Eldorado,” a documentary about a new dance piece choreographed to a Karlheinz Stockhausen score. Sure to increase, or at least intensify, Assayas’ following in New York, the retrospective is a great opportunity both for students interested in French cinema to delve deeper into the work of one of the nation’s leading contemporary directors, and for skeptics to see that there’s more to French film than Gérard Depardieu.
wildcard
Fall Harvest Festival —Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 6, Furman Street (at Atlantic Avenue), Saturday, Oct. 23, 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m., free. Rejoice in the autumn season and get ready for Halloween by heading to Brooklyn for a costume parade, face painting, and a fall storytime. Even though it’s a long trip across the bridge, decorating a pumpkin while listening to live music is a great stressbuster.
art
‘Arboreal’ —Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, 830 Fifth Ave., daily through October 28, free. Although New York is known as a concrete jungle, artists are now celebrating the city’s millions of trees with verdant artwork. Despite the slight irony that artists are using the earth’s resources to honor trees instead of planting more of them, this exhibit is worth checking out.
OCTOBER 22, 2010
CLASSIFIEDS
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OCTOBER 22, 2010